Mexico

The policy of readjustment between the public and private sectors in Mexico comes under the definition of the country's development model, a process in which the priority traditionally given to import substitution would go instead to international competitiveness. The resulting structural changes include two aspects. First, they are intended to rescale the public sector by reducing the number of quasi-public firms. This objective is being pursued by closing them, letting them go to the wall, transferring them to regional entitites or selling them to the private sector. Second, through industrial restructuring, the firms kept in the public sector must be modernised, balance their books and become competitive.

The readjustment policy is still in a transitional phase for, in addition to the shortcomings of the techniques used and the lack of transparency, this process is encountering opposition from both the "social" sector and a part of the politicial establishment ...

The variety of channels through which devaluation of the exchange rate impacts on real tax receipts, calls for empirical clarification. This paper should be seen as a first attempt towards empirical evidence. It establishes the causal relationships between the real exchange rate and real tax receipts. A causality test rejects the hypothesis of unidirectional causality running from taxes to the exchange rate. The causal inferences from the Sims test allow to use the real exchange rate as an exogenous determinant in a simple simultaneous equation model. The model endogenises tax yields and tax bases to allow for a test of the significance and relevance of the exchange rate to explain variations in real tax receipts. An important insight results from the distinction of the direct (price) effect and indirect (output) effect of changes in the real exchange rate on tax receipts. A double-logarithmic version of the model with (seasonally adjusted) quarterly data is estimated for Korea and ...

Maize has been a staple food in Mexico since pre-Hispanic times and is still an important source of calories and protein in daily consumption, especially for poor families. The pattern of consumption is nevertheless changing; with the share of food consumption declining and feed utilisation expanding. The agro-climatic conditions of production are highly diverse, with wide ranges in yields and rainfed areas accounting for the major share of total maize area and of total production. Mexico has become an important importer of both maize grain and seed. Reduction of these high levels of grain imports and growth in domestic production are priority policy objectives.

Improved seeds are sown in only one-fifth of the total area cultivated, but half the irrigated area. Despite the wide genetic variability of maize in Mexico only five improved varieties accounted for almost half the improved seed used during the spring/summer growing season. There is a pressing need in Mexico for a wider ...

From 1983 to 1989 Mexico pursued a strategy of integration into the global economy and reducing dependence on the US economy. That strategy was based on bilateral sectoral negotiations with the United States and multilateral negotiations through GATT to obtain recipiocity for Mexico’s own trade liberalisation, combined with efforts to attract Japanese and European FDI. Economic reforms included rather harsh macroeconomic adjustments (notably fiscal-deficit reduction), which lowered annual inflation from 200 to 20 per cent, and trade liberalisation, which has helped to make Mexico a leading exporter of manufactures. More gradual and pragmatic reforms were undertaken to promote FDI, deregulate industry and privatise state enterprises.

The globalisation strategy was perceived as too ambitious, however, and abandoned in mid-1989 for three principal reasons: the US-Canada FTA was seen as a threat, changes in Eastern Europe were thought to undermine possibilities for significantly ...

Should Mexican agriculture be liberalized? If so, how fast should this be done, and what policies should accompany the transition? We use Mexican agriculture as a case study to analyze the transition problems that arise in most major economic reforms. We focus on the implications for policy design of the absence of efficient capital markets; on the welfare costs of reforming only gradually; on incentive problems created by trade adjustment policies; and on the redistributive aspects of policy reform in the presence of realistic limits on available policy instruments. Our key point is that adjustment should focus on increasing the value of the assets owned by the groups affected, and not on direct income transfers or programs targeted on output or other characteristics controlled by the beneficiaries. We target adjustment on what people have, as opposed to what people do ...

This paper presents a dynamic model simulating the Mexican economy, concentrating on the effects of public indebtedness. Three main variables are at the heart of the economic dynamic which is described here: the real domestic interest rate, the price of the debt on the secondary market, and the real exchange rate. The real domestic interest rate, which includes a risk premium on investments in Mexico, associated to a risk of illiquidity in the public sector, in turn influences the behaviour of private-sector investment. The price on the secondary market, which also includes a risk-bonus factor, in addition influences long-term expectations of the financial reliability of Mexico and therefore affects investment behaviour. The real exchange rate, which depends on the macroeconomic balance between goods and services, in turn affects public finances through the valuation of the contractual service of the external debt. This model is used to simulate the effects of the Brady plan, the ...

This case study of Mexico examines developments in agricultural biotechnology against the background of recent changes in macro-economic, environmental and agricultural policies as well as in the regulation of the seeds industry, intellectual property protection and biosafety. It also identifies incentives and constraints at the different phases of research, technology development and diffusion of biotechnology in agriculture.

The study suggests that, under current conditions, biotechnology is likely to benefit only those producers already taking advantage of relatively complex technological packages and to bypass small farmers and peasants. It concludes with recommendations for the establishment of a biotechnology policy for the agriculture sector.